Judges are not under an affirmative obligation to consider whether defendants should receive indeterminate sentences for crimes they maintain were committed in response to physical, sexual or psychological abuse, an upstate appellate court ruled Thursday.
Defendant Jacqueline Smalls failed to request that the alternate sentencing option in Penal Law §60.12 be invoked for the first-degree manslaughter charge to which she pleaded guilty in 2013, and the court was not obligated to consider it, an Appellate Division, Third Department, panel ruled in People v. Smalls, 106512.
